


A superb nova

by Woozletania



Series: Sanctuary [7]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captivity, Escape, Hurt/Comfort, Suffering, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-07 04:41:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15901092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woozletania/pseuds/Woozletania
Summary: Before the very polite Ravager captain captured Rocket and put him to work, there was the impolite one who tried to do the same thing.  And what happened on that ship was one reason why the second was so nice.  Back Rocket into a corner and there's no telling what bad thing might happen.





	1. The cage

He hurt.

As Rocket swam back toward consciousness, wanting very badly not to, that was the first thing he noticed. He hurt. All over.

Hangover? No. He hadn't been drinking...had he? Almost awake now, he tried to remember. He'd been shopping for supplies on Ragni, just another floating fuel station with the usual assortment of junkers. Then...what? The last thing he remembered was walking down the ramp of the Milano with Groot.

He was curled up in a ball. That was how he usually slept, but he didn't normally wake up with pain in every joint. Without opening his eyes or moving he considered what his senses told him.

Touch: besides the pain, he was lying on a metal grille. His tail was pressed against one too, he could feel his fur bristling through in both places. So, cage. He was in a cage. 

An instinctual panic welled up in him. He couldn't be a cage. Not again! With a brutal effort he forced himself to calm down. "No, you das't idiot,” he thought. “Don't panic. Learn." Only a faint whine emerged from him before he clamped his muzzle shut. Someone might be watching and he needed intel. What else could he sense?

Back to the pain. Muscle aches, joint aches, headache. Someone had hit him with a sonic stunner. Probably several times from the feel of it. And the joint aches...everywhere except his tail, which didn't have cybernetics. 

On to hearing. Yes, there it was. That hum he'd heard before, years ago, the last time he was in a cage. Cybernetics dampers, turned up so high his metal-laced bones and servos ached. His cybernetics were powered by his metabolism so the only way to shut them down was to continually drain power out of them. Out of him, too, since they ran on his blood sugar, on the calories he ate. At this setting there was a genuine risk to his health unless he ate constantly. That explained why he was so hungry. And when he did try to move, he'd have only a fifth his usual strength, if his cybernetics didn't drain even that out of him as they tried to fight the dampers.

Behind the hum, the rumble of engines and the whisper of ventilation. Like most of his senses his hearing was vastly superior to a human's and Rocket categorized the ship he was on as a class 7 Kree freighter with hopped-up drives. Merchants didn't do that to drives, the maintenance was expensive and the odds of failure went way up when you tuned civilian drives to military specs. That meant whoever owned the ship needed both cargo bays and the speed to catch people with civilian drives. That meant pirates. He was on the starboard side of the ship from the sound of it, midways aft, which if he recalled correctly put him in the machine shops. 

Smell. What could he smell? Hot metal - they must have welded the cage around him, he expected to open his eyes and find no latch or door at all. Burnt fur, that would be his from a careless tech with the welder. And bodies, warm breathing bodies, half a dozen species had been close recently but weren't here now. Kree, Xandarian, a couple other flavors of humie. Dirty, sweaty bodies, oil, cybernetics, leather. Ravagers? But since Ego the Ravagers and Guardians had a truce. Outlaw Ravagers then?

Rocket sniffed. What he didn't smell was Groot, or Pete, or any of the other Guardians, except for the faint residue where they'd touched his fur or he'd slept on their clothes. That was good. They - whoever 'they' were - must only have gotten him. Whatever happened to him, his family was safe. He hoped.

Taste: he tasted blood. That was no surprise. With his tongue he felt the gaps in his mouth where they'd pulled out the shearing teeth on either side of his jaw. The teeth he'd had reenforced with hullmetal in case he needed to gnaw his way out of a cage. That meant they'd scanned him and he wouldn't find any of the tools he hid in his fur for this sort of emergency.

So. He was on a pirate ship. Weak, in pain, his tools and weapons gone, welded into a cage. Rocket had learned all he could eyes closed and opened them to see a bleak metal room with a sturdy door. Sure enough he was in a cage, and one resting atop a relief unit. They didn't even need to let him out to crap.

Just outside the cage and out of reach were the spike-shaped antennas of the damper field, one at each corner and focusing the effect inward from the one hollowed-out side on each one. And sure enough he was weak. It took most of his strength just to stand up and look around. Some cybernetics had automatic shutdowns to deal with power drains but the flarknards who made him couldn't be bothered. Why put in the bells and whistles when you're just going to euthanize your tech demonstrator anyway? When the idea is to prove the concept and then move on to full-sized super soldiers, who cared if your furry little prototype got second-rate cybernetics?

A water bottle hung on one side of the cage and without thinking, in a habit he developed as a cub and never really broke, he sucked water out of the tube. There it was: years of traveling, learning, and that reaction was still there. He'd grown up in a cage and here he was again -

The old fear welled up again and Rocket gritted his teeth and gripped the mesh of the cage so hard it hurt. Someone had him good. Someone thought they had a new pet, or new mechanic, or new slave. It took him a minute this time to force back the panic, the need to throw himself against the mesh, to get out somehow. Strong front. Put on a strong front, no matter how scared he was.

Naturally they'd stripped him naked and he tried to calm himself by grooming his fur, rubbing his face, running his claws through the thick fur of his forearms. At least they hadn't shaved him. If they had they would see the tattoos, the numbers branded into him at the lab, the scars, the protruding bolts. 

What they wouldn't see was that some of the tattoos and scars were recent, because he'd taken great care to make them look old. With the terror forced back, at least for a little while, Rocket examined his surroundings. 

The cage was half a humie high, just tall enough for him to stand if he didn't mind his ears hitting the top, half a humie deep and one humie long, about the size of the sleeping nook he'd built under his workbench. Sure enough it was a sheet of hardware cloth welded shut, each bar no thicker than a clawtip but too close together and too interwoven to tear apart even if he had his full strength. No hinges, no door. No way out.

Someone thought they had him. Rocket tamped the fear down hard, studied the room, and planned. 

They weren't the first to think that. He'd taught the last batch of humies how wrong they were. He would teach the lesson again.

Someone was outside the door. Even through the thick metal he heard a heavy tread and the click of the lock Rocket stood up straight. Put on a strong front. Watch and learn, and think. 

Because he was not going to spend the rest of his life in a cage. He would get out, or he would die.


	2. Captain Sharktooth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rocket meets the captain of the Superb Nova. He doesn't like him.

Captain Sharktooth was first through the door, over two meters tall and heavy with muscle. The silver of his prosthetic hand glittered in the light of the overheads as he entered, followed by Kara, the first officer, and Qua'l, the chief engineer. Each stayed a step behind their captain but moved to the sides so they approached the cage side by side and each in the others' peripheral vision. You don't get to be a Ravager officer by being trusting.

The captain came to a stop a meter from the cage, gnawing his lower lip with the filed teeth that gave him his name. Sharktooth was Kree, of the blue-skinned minority and covered with scars. Some from knives, some from gunfire, some from teeth.

Inside the cage was a little furry creature, collapsed against the side with one clawed hand hooked into the mesh and quite unconscious.

"I thought you said it'd be up by now," Sharptooth grunted. 

"Looks like it was," Qua'l replied, "And then passed out again." Qua'l was green and scaled, his teeth sharp as his captain's but with no need of a file to get there. Badoon, his race was called, notorious slavers throughout the galaxy.

"Cap'n," said Kara. She was female and Kree like her captain, of the pink-skinned majority. A head shorter, but sharp and strong as the honed blades at her side. Any female Ravager must be twice the fighter and she was true to that rule. No one with any sense gave Kara any lip. "He's got the damper set to eight."

"Eight?" Sharktooth backhanded the engineer in the chest hard enough to make him stagger a step back. "Internal cybernetics, you moron! It's not worth half as much dead!" 

Qua'l was new to the crew, if a skilled engineer, and didn't dare stand up to his captain. Instead he slunk back a pace in the sneakthief way so stereotypical of badoon. "You said it was dangerous, Cap'n. I just thought -"

"I pay you to fix things, you das't idiot. Not think! Kara, set it to five."

"Cap'n," the whip-thin Kree said, and moved a slider. "It may still be damaged. If we hadn't come when we did..."

"I know," Sharktooth growled. "Ten thousand instead of a hundred thousand Units." The furry creature didn't stir and the captain pulled a rod from a long pocket sewn into his pants and rapped it against the cage.

The two subordinates stepped smartly back as sparks flew. It was grounded to the deckplates and the charge ran from the shockstick through the metal to get there. It also ran through Rocket.

Every hair on his body stood on end and an anguished shriek was forced from his lips as the shock jolted him awake. The fingers hooked through the mesh tensed and his fangs showed in a rictus of agony. The shock only lasted a moment but when it was done he yanked his hand from the mesh and sat up, struggling to do even that. Wisps of smoke rose from his fur and he panted for a moment before speaking.

"Who...who the das't hell are you s'posed to be?"

"You will address me as Captain," Sharktooth said with a sardonic curl of his lip. "Cap'n Sharktooth of the privateer _Superb Nova._ "

"Privateer," the little fanged thing snarled. "Y'mean pirate, you das't-"

"Captain," said Sharktooth pleasantly. "Sharktooth." Before he finished speaking the rod came down on the cage again. The little furry thing saw it coming but all it could do was curl up to minimize contact with the conductive mesh. Less contact was still some though and once again he blew up into a fuzzy ball as the current stood all his fur on end. This time Sharktooth left the rod in contact with the mesh for a second longer and when he lifted it the ringtailed creature in the cage barely had the strength to roll over and glare at him. Blood stained the fur around his mouth, either from biting his tongue or from the rude dental work done while he was out.

"Internal cybernetics," said the captain, and flexed his mechanical hand. "Can't get at them to replace power cells so they run off your metabolism. And after two hours under the damper at that setting you must be starving." 

The mechanical hand went to another pocket in his armored trousers and extracted a nutrient stick. Despite itself the little ringtail's eyes locked on the food the second it appeared. "Captain," Sharptooth said.

The ringtail growled and opened its mouth to snarl an insult, only to flinch back from the mesh as Sharktooth lifted the shockstick. The other hand waggled the food bar. "Captain," he said patiently. "Or," the shockstick came down toward the cage.

"Cap'n!" shouted the ringtail the instant before the shock hit. Sharktooth let the rod bounce off the mesh this time so the shock was only momentary and the ringtail hauled himself laboriously up off the floor of the cage. "Cap'n," he whined. He was so weak he missed the food stick with the first grab as Sharktooth stuck it through the mesh. The ravenous creature got it on the second try and yanked it out of the captain's hand, backing into the far corner of the cage to tear it apart. Even the obvious pain from eating with a recently operated-on mouth didn't stop him from wolfing it down.

"That's better," Sharptooth said pleasantly. "Behave, and you get fed. Don't behave, and you get the stick."

"Wait," the ringtail said as the captain turned away. "What's this all about? Why me?"

"Ha! That's what they all say!" Sharptooth threw back his head and laughed. That did buy the ringtail another few seconds of his attention, though. "Haven't decided what to do with you yet. Saw a chance to grab you and took it, heard you're a good mechanic. Maybe you can teach mine, because he's useless." Qua'l didn't dare respond as the captain once more backhanded him in the chest.

"I can't teach from a cage," the ringtail said. He managed to get back to his feet, a few spots on his fur still smoldering, but as he reached for the mesh he winced and pulled back. The memory of getting locked to it by current was still fresh.

"You'll teach if you want to eat," the captain said, and grinned a sharp-toothed grin as the little ringtail flinched away from the side of the cage when he brought the shockstick near. "Or maybe I'll just keep you in there as a pet."

"I ain't nobody's pet," the ringtail snarled, and a second later he was curled up in a ball as the current ran through him once more. Sharktooth laughed as he turned away once more, and the ringtail's eyes opened just in time to see the nutrient bar landed on top of the cage. Frantic with hunger he just managed to grab it before it rolled off, dragging it through the mesh and backing once more into a corner to wolf it down.

"You sure about that? What's more important to you, eating or your pride?"

The door slid shut behind the three Ravagers and Rocket sat down, picking the last few crumbs of food from his fur and snapping them up. These emergency ration bars were supposed to feed a humie-sized creature for a third of a day per bar and he'd had two, but he ate almost as much as Quill due to his cybernetics and the drain from the dampers made it even worse. Two bars and he was still hungry.

So. What had he learned by playing dead and meeting his captors? Several useful things.

One: there was no camera in the room, or else there was lag time between the observer and the captain. They hadn't known he was up until they saw him sprawled on the floor.

Two: they were planning to sell him to someone, despite Sharktooth's claim of keeping him as a pet or using him to train techs. As far as he knew there were no active bounties against him which meant it was some scientist or some collector of rare creatures. Maybe even 'collector' with a capital C. He didn't want to end up in the clutches of anyone like that. He'd gone a year without seeing the inside of a cage or jail – until now, anyway - and he'd like to go a lot longer.

Three: he didn't like Sharktooth. At all. Or trust him.

He was hurt. Hungry. Weak. Maybe he should sit tight and hope the other Guardians showed up to rescue him. That might be the smart thing to do. It was not the thing he was going to do. And they hadn't put a muzzle on him. That was a mistake. Time to take advantage of it.

Rocket parted the fur of his right forearm. There on the skin were tattoos left from when he was shaved in the lab and marked to show researchers where to cut. But some of the tattoos were much younger than that, though you wouldn't know from looking at them. Rocket found the series of three Xs, marking the beginning, middle and end of a planned cut. They looked to be left over from his creation, as they lay along a healed scar.

Rocket grimaced. This was going to suck. But he had to do it.

He didn't have a scalpel. He had teeth, sharp ones at that. Rocket began to chew.


	3. Negotiations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Sharktooth negotiates a price for the captive he has squirreled away. Or the captive he thinks he does, anyway.

Captain Sharktooth smirked as he strode down the corridor, outpacing his lieutenants. Most Ravager captains wouldn't let you get behind them like that, but he wasn't most captains. It was almost a dare: who would try to get into his blind spot and try something? A few had, but he was still captain, and they were corpses floating in space.

"Angry little thing," Kara noted. "Take some time to tame."

"Not our problem," the captain replied. "Someone else can worry about that." With a brisk, militarily precise right-face he turned a corner into the briefing room. The smell of burnt flesh still stung the nostrils from the taking of the _Nova_ not a week ago. The merchants put up a good fight, but not good enough.

The captain slid into the largest of the chairs and waved a floating display into view. Halvin, an outcast Kronan resembling an ambulatory statue, appeared. "Cap'n," the Kronan said. "No sign of pursuit."

"I expect not, after all those jumps," Kara said. She slid into the seat next to Sharktooth's. "Any word from the _Bonadventure?"_

The captain shook shook his head. "We won't hear from the them for a while. They have to find a buyer for the _Nova_ and then tell us where to meet." He nodded to the Kronan and waved the screen away.

The drawback of capturing a substantial ship like the _Superb Nova_ is the pirate ends up with two ships to crew. Captain Sharktooth led the prize crew and set about staying out of sight of Nova Corps and other constabularies while Commander Rax shopped around for a buyer. The result was they had a dozen crewman to run a sixty-thousand-ton freighter. The recommended crew was at least thirty. And a sudden "acquisition" contract - e.g. a kidnapping - stretched their resources thinner still. Strain those resources too far, people make mistakes and get killed. Sure enough...

"Losing Manas didn't help," Qua'l thought out loud. "That tree thing was deadly."

Kara sat back, chewing her lower lip. It seemed like such a simple mission once they lucked into running into the Guardians right after getting the contract. Stun the furry thing and the tree and cart them back to the ship. And half of that worked brilliantly. They got the drop on their captive as he passed by an alley in the market and hit him with a sonic stunner, set high per the captain's orders. "He's little, but he's tough, according to our client," the cap'n said. So the furry little vermin went flying as though kicked...but the tree didn't.

Kara, in charge of the raid, Qua'l, new to the crew, and Manas, a Shi'ar who wasn't Captain someplace only because he didn't want to me, all fired at once and the tree still didn't drop! Caught in the outer edge of the stunner shots the little vermin that was the primary target jerked on the ground. It staggered the four-foot-tall tree, and Manas, the best fighter on the ship, darted forward, grabbed the vermin by its ringed tail and threw it to Kara. He thought the tree was finally subdued. He learned of his error only when it sprouted out a woody tentacle and impaled him.

"Sharra," Manas groaned, calling on one of his gods, but he was already dead and doubly so a moment later when the grenade hit.

"I am GROOT!" The thing roared, tossing Manas's body aside, and such was the rage and desperation on its woody face as it came for the furry thing in Kara's arms that Qua'l instinctively grabbed the grenade from his belt and threw it. Kara saw it fly and turned to run.

"Go!" She shouted to Qua'l. Their snatch and grab was taking too long but the concussion grenade's blast brought the nearby vendor's stall down and bought them maybe a minute's grace before either the horrible tree thing, the local constabulary or the rest of the Guardians showed up to see what all the fuss was.

"What was that thing," Qua'l snarled as they ran. "Cap'n didn't say it was immune to stunners."

"This wasn't," Kara said of the furry little creature she had slung over her shoulder. With her own pistol holstered she plucked one weapon after another from its body and threw them over her shoulder as they ran. A last one went out the door of their pod as it shut and she tossed the limp body to Qua'l as she dropped into the pilot's seat.

"Strip it, stick it in a crate and keep it out of view of the screen," she said curtly as she raised the ship slow and careful as a merchant would. "I have to convince local flight control we're just a peaceful supply shuttle, so keep your mouth shut too. And scan that thing. There's no telling how many more weapons it has hidden."

That was how they got their captive and lost a crewmate. You took the good with the bad as a Ravager.

"Right," Cap'n Sharktooth said as he sat back in his chair. "First things first. Qua'l, you hit the galley and get some food for that thing."

"What, me?" The badoon's slit pupils narrowed. "I'm an engineer, not a steward."

"What you are is the man who almost cost us our bounty!" The captain snapped. "We lost our best fighter getting it, and you set the damper too high! If we had waited one or two more hours to go in there it could have died and then it'd have been for nothing. So you go get it some food, and if anything happens to that thing I'm taking it out of your share when we sell this boat. If you're lucky," the sharp-toothed Kree said with a leer.

Qua'l bit back a curse. "Aye cap'n." He showed his displeasure with a flick of his scaly tail as he went out the door.

As soon as he was gone the captain tapped in a code on the table console and summoned a floating screen into view. Moments likes a pink-skinned humanoid woman appeared. "Tivan industries."

"Yeah Caella, I need to talk to your boss."

The woman's face tightened at the familiarity. "Master Tivan is very busy. I can inform him of your call and he will return it when he is available."

"No problem," Sharktooth said, leaning casually back in his chair. "Just tell him we got a better offer for that bounty he sent us after. Better luck next time, though."

The woman flinched as though she'd been shocked. The Collector had a reputation for being...ungenerous when subordinates failed him in even minor ways and sure enough, her attitude changed instantly. "One moment please, Captain."

The screen flickered and there was Tanileer Tivan, the Collector and an Elder of the Universe. Among the oldest beings known to exist, the immortal Elders filled their lives with overwhelming obsessions. The Champion fought, the Grandmaster gamed, the Collector...collected.

"Captain Sharktooth," said the Collector, pushing the many-lensed scanner goggles up on has forehead and into his mess of white hair. "Do you have them?"

"Well, there was a little problem," the captain said, leaning forward. "You didn't tell us the tree thing was immune to stunners. It killed one of my best men and we only got the furry one."

"A lack of competence on your part does not represent an error on my part," the Collector said calmly. "The two are a set. Still, as the only member of its species, I suppose I could give you, say, forty percent of the original offer."

"Yeah, about that," Sharktooth said with an equally casual air. "I been looking around, and your offer wasn't exactly generous. You aren't the only one who collects unique things. Why, there's a specialty restaurant on Regulus that's offered us fifty thousand just for the furry one. One of a kind species, you know. Some people pay extra for a dinner like that."

"I will match that offer," the Collector said, expression carefully neutral.

No one commented on the horror of selling a sapient being to be carved up and cooked. There was a reason the Sharktooth clan was outcast and the Collector had billions of years of experience in learning the terrible things people did to each other. To him lesser beings were like vermin, short lived and inconsequential.

"And I got an offer of ten thousand just for its skeleton," Sharktooth went on. "Unique, first generation...what is it called, Uplift cybernetics. Plus, I got someone who just wants the hide to stuff, they're going to make some sort of sex toy out of it -"

"You've made your point, Captain," said the Collector. "I will pay you the original amount even though you only caught one of the targets. I will match it if you get me the second."

"You got yourself a deal, Tivan. See you in a week." Sharktooth stabbed a finger at a control and made sure a pointy grin was the last thing the Collector saw.

"Was any of that a bluff?" Kara flicked up a screen of her own and began checking things off an inventory. Half the prize crew was going through the cargo holds to see if anything down there didn't match the cargo manifest. You never knew which merchant might sneak in high value contraband, especially contraband that took up little space and was easy to conceal. Drugs, gems, maybe even weapons.

"Part of it," Sharktooth said, and called up a second screen to do the same. "I got a buyer for the skeleton and pelt but the restaurant's only offered ten thou so far. I could have talked them up, though."

For the next half hour the only conversation was the occasional muttered curse as they went through the inventory. They'd gotten the ship easily enough but that turned out to be because the cargo was so low value it was a marvel the undermanned and now deceased merchant crew was still in business. Half the hold was crates of fertilizer and the rest wasn't much better smelling.

Suddenly Sharktooth looked up. A finger with a painstakingly sharpened and polished nail jabbed a control. "Cookie. Is Qua'l there?"

"No cap'n," hissed the askaviarian at the far end of the call. Half of Cookie's tentacles ended in stumps or assorted cybernetics including a powered egg whisk and a blender thanks to Ravagers unhappy with his food but he'd eventually matured into a decent cook. It was that or end up in a pot himself since like most Ravagers he was an outlaw with no place else to go. "He was here earlier and picked up a tray of food. Haven't seen him since."

"Cap'n?" Kara followed in Sharktooth's wake as the captain lurched out of his chair and strode out the door.

"He's been gone too long," Sharktooth snapped. 

Kara nodded, matching his long strides. Sharktooth didn't trust their new engineer. If they weren't so short manned he'd never let a newbie like Qua'l run around on his own. He might be taking his frustration out on their very valuable captive or even trying to get off the ship with it.

It was worse than that. The door whooshed open to reveal a layer of smoke just below the ceiling and Qua'l sprawled on the floor just past the entry. The cybernetics jammer, its antenna all now in a line facing the door, was still smoldering. There was a hole in the cage and tiny bloody handprints on the metal decking near it. 

Kara followed the drops of blood over to the wall and saw the hole cut in the thick metal mesh over the life support vent - mesh added in what seemed an abundance of caution in case their prize got loose, but still somehow cut away. The air vents were too small for a humanoid...but not too small for their captive. Her pistol was in her hand but there was no one to shoot.

"Supremor curse it," Sharktooth said, and kicked Qua'l in the ribs, "What the hell happened?"


	4. All according to plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They had Rocket safely locked up. They'd taken every reasonable precaution. Or so they thought.

It hurt. A lot.

There was a time when he lived in constant pain from botched operations and deteriorating cybernetics. There was also a time when he operated on himself because there wasn't a doctor in the galaxy he trusted. Those bad old days were largely done but Rocket remembered what it was like to hurt. So when his fangs sank into his forearm it was an old, familiar pain. Sure, it sucked, but he'd done it before. When you make yourself an emergency escape kit, you practice getting to it and using it. That meant this was not the first time Rocket chewed into his own arm.

They'd pulled his reinforced carnassials right out of his mouth, but they'd missed the ultra-hard ceramic edge he'd put on the back edge of his upper canine teeth. Each was as sharp as a knife and he parted the fur of his forearm with the other hand, found the tattoo that showed where to bite and put the point of one fang atop it. Rocket sucked in a breath to prepare himself for the pain and bit down.

The forearm is a mass of long muscles bundled in groups to bend fingers or wrist. He'd long since memorized their layout and held his wrist with his other hand as he pulled it away from his nose. As his elbow straightened the sharp edge of his fang opened his forearm up as though his pelt came equipped with a zipper. Except zippers don't usually bleed this much.

Guessing he'd cut far enough - the blood would cover up the "stop" tattoo so he didn't bother looking - Rocket opened his mouth and examined the result. A long bleeding cut ran from his wrist halfway to his elbow but the steady but slow flow of red meant he'd missed the arteries and major veins.

"Practice makes perfect," he muttered, and gritted his teeth as he dug into the cut with his claws. Push the muscle bundles apart, slide his fingertips past the veins - very carefully! There was a reason he didn't put a knife edge on his claws. There. The smooth feet of bone beneath his sensitive fingers...and the long, subtle bulge along that bone.

The trick was to fool scans while hiding gear. Rocket gave it a lot of thought and concluded that the best bet was to hide it next to the dense metal of his reenforced bones. Unfortunately that meant cutting himself open to get at it. Rocket found the notch in the "bone" sized for his clawtips, pinched, and pulled. The pain forced a low growl out of him but he had it out, a three-inch rod the size of a lead pencil cut in half lengthwise. He'd had to grind a slot into his radius bone to hide it. That hadn't been fun. This wasn't fun either. 

Blood dripped down his wrist and he pressed the cut against his belly to slow the bleeding. He hadn't damaged any major blood vessels but the capillary bleeding was still bad enough that he needed to fix it soon. It was going to to have to wait. With blood-slick claws he squeezed the rod until it split at one end. To the eye the was nothing between the points, but the naked eye couldn't make out the invisibly thin, incredibly strong wire connecting them. One by one he cut strands of the cage mesh by sliding them into the gap between the tips of the rod and in short order he pushed a flap of cage down and was out.

So. Step one completed. Rocket scuttled over to the control panel for the cybernetics jammer. Outside the cage and the tightly focused beams his strength returned but he was leaving bloody handprints every time we went down on all fours. Click, jammer off. By great good fortune some tech left an oily and partly burnt rag behind when they installed the console and he wrapped that around his forearm to staunch the bleeding. He'd worry about infection later, if he lived that long.

Rocket spent a minute arranging the jammer antennas in line from cage to door and another frantically rewiring the thing for a single massive pulse. Anyone who came through the door with any cybernetics built in was going to have problems and a pulse this powerful would even momentarily stun a non-cyborg. Not many people knew you could do that with jammer but he'd grown up around them and knew their ins and outs. Usually they were pointed at him. It was nice to have the shoe on the other foot for a change, as Quill would say. Not that he wore shoes, but still.

There was just enough cable between antennae and console to let him push the thing below the life support vent on the wall and he scrambled atop it, pinching the rod to once more expose the monowire and cutting the armored mesh over the vent one strand at a time. He pulled down the flap of mesh and scrambled up into the vent, sniffing and peering about. These vents ran to virtually every compartment on a ship and he did a mental review of the layout of a Kree class 7 freighter. Starboard side, midway aft, about twenty meters forward of the starboard engine room. 

He went on all fours along the vent far enough to confirm his opinion of the model of ship before carefully wiping his hands on his fur and doubling back. As best he could manage he left bloody tracks into the vent but none coming back. The humies were too big to fit in here but if some crewman was small enough they'd hopefully think he kept going and was somewhere in the maze of air vents.

As he dropped back to the deck his furry ears twitched. Someone, from the sound of it just one person, was approaching the door. Rocket scuttled over to the jammer console on all fours and put one hand on the switch while leaning as far away from it as possible. With the das't cheap gear these pirates had -

He was right to be cautious. The door whooshed open and in stepped the badoon engineer, a tray of food in his hands. The reptile's tail went rigid with shock as he saw Rocket and he dropped the tray, one hand darting for a sidearm. Too late. Rocket threw the switch and the console blew up.

A moment later Rocket blinked himself awake and scrambled to his feet, cursing himself for underestimating the violence of the blast. His ears hurt from the bang and he was bleeding in new spots from shrapnel, not to mention the smell of scorched fur from the arc flash. Even the backscatter from the damper blast made every joint in his body hurt again. The good news was the engineer was flat on his face and barely stirred as Rocket scuttled over. He made sure the badoon stayed down by grabbing his ears and beating his face against the deck until he was still, then searched him.

At least he tried to search him, but the smell of spilled food was overpowering and he was so hungry after exposure to the damper he paused only to grab the man's sidearm before wolfing down all the scraps of food he could find. He was so hungry he didn't even taste it. When all that was left was a cooked leg of some animal - best not to inquire too closely - he stuck that crossways in his muzzle and finished the search.

So: stunner - he'd hoped for a more lethal weapon but beggars can't be choosers. A few tools, which he'd expected, and best of all an access key that would get him through most doors until someone went around and rekeyed the locks. He also tore off part of the badoon's shirt and used it to bandage his own wounds. Some of the shrapnel cuts were bleeding pretty freely but he stopped that quickly enough. In a perfect world he'd like a medical kit so he could get the bits of metal out of himself but he settled for wrapping his forearm cut again and sticking the closed monowire blade through the makeshift bandages. He smelled of burnt fur and blood but hopefully the crew was as nose-blind as Quill.

Rocket pressed his ear to the door long enough to assure himself no one waited outside, then opened it with the engineer's key. The passageway outside confirmed his earlier opinion. He was on a Kree freighter barely changed from when the pirates captured it. They must have taken it very recently and that meant he knew where most things were. He scuttled down the hall toward the stern of the ship, passing a door labelled EMERGENCY STORES and trying the key on the next.

Rocket grinned as the door swung shut behind him. The label on the outside read TOOL ROOM and it didn't lie. Racks of neatly organized tools, manual and power, and best of all was what lay behind them. The engineer's key, almost certainly looted from the kree who maintained the ship before the takeover, opened this hatch as well.

With skill borne of years of tinkering and a plan already made Rocket stuffed carefully selected tools into a pouch and slung it over his shoulder before disappearing into the maintenance tunnel and closing the hatch behind him. The maintenance shafts were the guts of the ship and you could get to most vital systems from there.

A more experienced engineer than Qua'l, if you asked him "What's the worst place a techie could get to in the ship if he wanted to cause damage," would answer at once.

It was where Rocket was now.


	5. A superb nova

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's easy to underestimate Rocket. He's little, antisocial and angry, so it's easy to mistake him for someone you can stick in a cage and forget. If you're lucky, you'll even survive doing that. The crew of the _Superb Nova_ is not so lucky.

Rocket limped. The overloaded cybernetics damper had done some sort of delayed damage and his right leg didn't work quite right. It wasn't so bad on all fours and the maintenance space favored that so Rocket gritted his teeth and went about his business. One leg was weaker than the other but at least the damper didn't affect muscle other than momentarily.

He undid the last bolt and slid the access panel aside. Inside was a maze of colored cables and he grabbed the power sensor from his tool bag and went over them. Power here, here and here, no power there, there and there. Thankfully most were labeled – he didn't even need his implanted translator to read the Kree script - and he quickly reasoned out what needed to be done.

There were safety protocols to this sort of thing but he was in a hurry. Sooner or later someone would realize he wasn't in the vents. He should have killed the badoon engineer but in a moment of weakness he'd been unable to beat an unconscious man to death. Rocket grimaced, knowing what he was doing was dangerous, and after disconnecting and reconnecting half a dozen idle power cables in a new configuration he edged away from the panel and yanked on a different cable. An active one.

*****

"What the hell? Now what?" Halfway to the bridge Sharktooth cursed as his feet left the deck. A distant boom echoed down the hallway from somewhere in the guts of the ship.

"It got to the gravity controls," Kara said. She'd helped Qua'l stagger down the hall and grabbed his tail as the badoon floated away. "It must be in auxiliary control."

"Right." Sharktooth grabbed his comm handset. At least the little rodent couldn't meddle with their handhelds. And luckily he hadn't issued Qua'l one. It was bad enough the rat had a ship key and a stunner.

"This the cap'n," he growled into the handset. "We have a stowaway. It's in the vents and using that to get to ship systems. Whoever's closest to aux control, get in there and secure it. Engine room, bridge, stay where you are. And someone get to environmental control before the little bastard tries to suffocate us. Groups of two, it's armed."

"Aye cap'n," came a reply. "Jorge and I are in the starboard cargo bay. We'll get to environmental. Ralga and Tik are in the port bay, they can get aux control."

"Right," Sharktooth growled. He flexed his metal hand angrily. "Our stowaway is small and furry. You see anything that isn't big as us, shoot on sight. Stun it if possible but if you have to kill it, don't mangle it any more than necessary. The fewer pieces it's in, the more it's worth."

"Cap'n," Qua'l groaned from midair. "I can get gravity back from the bridge. Lights too, probably. The thing is just pulling wires and getting into stuff with my tools."

"Right." Sharktooth hauled on the manual door release for the bridge and saw Halvin hunched over a console, one stony hand anchoring him in the absence of gravity.

"Panel here," Qua'l groaned, and Kara locked her legs around a control chair to hold them still as the badoon undid the panel. It was plainly labeled POWER SYSTEMS - DANGER! and he fumbled at a nearby tool kit until Kara opened it with her free hand. The badoon grabbed a power sensor and touched various cables, then flipped a series of breakers. The overheads flickered back to life and slowly gravity returned as well, though barely enough to keep their feet on the deck.

"I'm running power through the starboard power plexus," the badoon said. "It can't get to that from the vents." He paused for a moment, his expression uncertain. "Cap'n, maybe we could just shut down the life support and take off in the cutters. We could come back when it's dead."

"I am not leaving that thing alone on my ship," Sharktooth snapped. "It's caused enough damage. If it gets to run the halls for even a few minutes there's no telling what it will get up to."

*****

What Rocket was doing was recover from his second electrical explosion of the day. His luck was alternating good and bad and having the current from the gravity power cable arc out against the deck was part of the bad. But the deed was done. He beat out the last sparks from his smoldering fur and limped further down the maintenance tunnel, cursing under his breath. More metal shrapnel was in his flesh now and he left the occasional red footprint in his wake. He'd done more damage to himself in his haste than the pirates had but it was that or live out his days in a cage.

He'd opened and tinkered with three control junctions so far. The first was a power nexus and he killed the lights from there, among other things. Then gravity, which should send the crew scampering to various control spaces. Now he slid the armored cover off a third.

A fully crewed ship would have people in the maintenance spaces by now looking for him but there were only a few pirates on board and their engineer was hurt on top of being inexperienced. Sharktooth was probably pissed at him and Rocket almost felt sorry for the badoon.

Almost. There was less to do in this panel and it was safer work. Rocket reconnected three cables in a new configuration and simply threw an emergency breaker inside the hatch.

"T minus two minutes," he muttered, dropping to all fours and trotting down the maintenance tunnel as fast as he could manage with one game leg.

It hurt to move quickly and the makeshift bandages wrapped around his wounds reddened. The one on his forearm was soaked through and felt the first touch of lightheadedness from blood loss. They'd made him tough and he healed fast but he just didn't have time to lie down and recover. Leaving a trail of red droplets in his wake he scuttled along, counting hatches and cross shafts. Now would be a bad time to make a mistake but major junctions were labeled and that let him double check his guesses as to where he was. These accessways were claustrophobically tight for a humie, largely wedged between decks, but he moved through them easily. Or would were it not for his injuries.

The _Superb Nova_ massed some sixty thousand tons and was over two hundred meters long, a fat, slow freighter with recently modified engines. Rocket made his way to the starboard side, counting internally. T minus one ten, T minus one minute. If there wasn't a cutter in the launch berth -

He breathed a sigh of relief as he peered from the low-set maintenance hatch and saw the open door of the cutter. Bigger than a life pod but smaller than a pinnace, a cutter was used as a shuttle or ship's boat by midsized ships like this one. They were so short handed they hadn't even posted a guard. Why bother? Cutters couldn't jump and they'd have all the time in the world to pick him off with the ship's point defense cannons if he launched it.

He allowed himself ten seconds to listen and sniff, just in case there was a guard after all, before scuttling into the cutter and slamming a hand on the hatch closure plate. With barely a glance around he leapt into the pilot's chair and threw switches with a hasty disregard for preflight procedures. He felt a lunch through the deck plates just as he launched the cutter.

*****

"Oh, now what?" The captain looked up from the scanner console where he'd been trying to track down their stowaway. The always-felt tremor of the ship's drive faded and an eerie silence descended, broken only by curses and the whisper of air from the vents.

"We've lost engines," Halvin said from his seat. "Interruption in the fuel supply."

"Cap'n," Kara said as Qua'l began to flip switches. "With no drive and bad gravity, that's two reasons we can't move the ship. That means -"

"It's not trying to piss us off," Sharktooth growled. "It's trying to escape. Halvin!"

"You're right cap'n, someone just launched a cutter from the starboard bay. It's sticking close to the hull and accelerating aft, where the point defense can't hit it. If it gets to that comet we just passed we could lose it."

"Qua'l, talk to me," Sharktooth snapped.

"We lost power to the fuel pumps," the badoon said. "When the reserve was exhausted the drives died. I can bypass and boost gravity so it's safe to turn. Once the cutter's out of our shadow the point defense can get it."

"Do it, das't you," the captain growled. "That thing is not getting away even if I have to blow it to bits instead of sell it."

Qua'l nodded and began flipping breakers and punching switches. Divert power through the starboard power plexus, double the feed to the gravity plates. The overhead lights flickered as he threw the last switch and a sudden chill ran down his spine.

The lights. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize the internal layout of the ship. Qua'l wasn't a bad engineer, just inexperienced, and he'd only had a week to learn the systems on the _Nova._ He'd had so much to do that poking into the environmental systems slipped down the list. He really didn't know the ins and out of the air vents where their furry little stowaway hid and so he'd had to assume it cut into various systems from in there or emerged into various compartments to do it.

Gravity control. Fuel pumps. Could you get to those from the vents? Maybe. But you could damn sure get to them from the maintenance shafts. Qua'l slapped his hip where the ship's key usually hung, his eyes going wide. The lights! That was a separate, minor system, and if it was in the maintenance spaces, to shut them off the thing had to have gotten into the same power nexus he'd just shunted power through. The nexus that was twenty meters down the access shaft from the fuel pumps it'd shut off. And the gravity controls too, for that matter. What had it really been doing in there?

"Bring us about;" Captain Sharktooth said. "Stand by point defense." Halvin nodded and advanced the drive control slider from station keeping to half power as Kara slid into the weapons control seat and powered up the guns.

Qua'l opened his mouth as the terrible certainty of what was about to happen appeared crystal clear in his mind. It had tampered with two different systems to divert power. Not to annoy them, but to -

"Cap'n!" He shouted, just as a dull boom rang through the hull of the ship. As the drive fired the gravity plates automatically compensated for the acceleration, and massive currents ran through previously idle circuits. Fifty meters away in a maintenance shaft the cross-connected cables Rocket tinkered with in the gravity controls shorted together, blowing out the panel and sending a huge charge down the line to the power nexus. He'd tinkered there too, and a second blast rattled the plates as an even more energetic explosion filled the shaft with shrapnel and white-hot plasma.

And by the little rodent's evil plan the massive charge burning out the power nexus discharged down yet another set of rearranged cables. At the end of them it found the grounds removed and their tips hard against the metal inside the third panel. 

The fuel pump control panel. Located, through an unfortunate quirk of shipbuilding, immediately adjacent to the starboard fuel tank and in the midst of lines carrying dangerously volatile shipfuel.

The hull of the _Superb Nova_ bulged and split, multicolored flames vomiting into space as the fuel lines gave up their contents. Rocket felt the kick as expanding plasma buffered the little cutter and made an instantaneous calculation, stomping hard on the accelerator then flicking the attitude controls to spin the cutter end for end. The Nova was a shrinking fist-sized dot on the screen, a pillar of star-hot plasma blowing out from one flank. More flame appeared as the cutter bay blew out into space and he wished, momentarily, that he'd had a few more seconds to get farther away. A full minute would have been nice. He knew what was coming next.

He had to see it. If he was far enough away then good, but he had to see it. They weren't the first people to put him in a cage, treat him like an animal. They weren't the first to suffer for it. Rocket's muzzle split in a fanged grin as a cataclysmic series of fuel explosions tore the _Nova_ apart.


	6. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A distress call leads the Guardians to their lost comrade. Maybe it’s a trap, but when your friend calls for help, you answer.

"We are arriving," Mantis said from the back seat of the Milano. Peter nodded and throttled down as they dropped through the gate into normal space. It was a starless nexus, just a convenient link spot between two gates and a long way from anywhere important. In the seat next to him Gamora tapped controls. She'd had to take Rocket's bolster seat out to fit into the co-pilot's chair. Or pilot's chair. Rocket maintained that _Peter_ was the co-pilot. 

"I am Groot," snapped the four-foot-tall tree in the next row of seats and Peter, aroused from his momentary woolgathering, looked across at Gamora. She ran another scan and shook her head.

"Nothing," she said. "But we are thousands of klicks from the target. The message was sent through the gate beacon from here." She flicked a set of coordinates from her screen over to Peter's.

"Got it." His hands knew what to do and his mind was free to worry as he sent the Milano toward the coordinates. "I hope he's all right. Drax, just in case..."

"Bringing weapons on line," the giant said from the seat next to Mantis. "They wanted Rocket. Maybe they want us too."

"Something ahead," Gamora said ten minutes later. "Debris field. Looked like a destroyed ship. There's not much left, there must have been a massive internal explosion."

Peter watched as the scanners resolved thousands of chunks of tumbling metal, some hurtling headlong into the starry dark and some more or less stationary. The debris field was hundreds of kilometers wide and he instinctively pinged it with the Guardian's comm frequency. Gamora looked up from her scanner.

"If this is a trap, Peter, that will tell them their bait has worked." But then "Contact. We just got a return ping. There in the debris, Peter. Scanning...looks like a small craft. Maybe a ship's boat."

The found the ship's cutter, scorched and battered, drifting in the shadow of one of the larger chunks of destroyed ship. If it had any engine power at all it was not using it. Peter snagged it with a tractor and pulled it airlock to airlock with the Milano. This was a classic way to get a boarding party onto a rescue ship but the cutter was small and he felt sorry for anyone trying to board a ship with both Drax and Gamora on it. Just the same he drew his blasters and Groot rose from his seat. Mantis stayed behind to man the scanners as the four of them went to their lock.

"Scanning," Gamora said from the lock, only for Groot to step forward and slam his hand against the door control. The hatch slid open, as did the matching one on the cutter, and Gamora had to step smartly to keep up with Groot as he rushed through.

The air was thin and full of the smell of burnt hair. The jump seats on the cutter were empty but in the pilot's seat -

"Oh man, Rocket." Groot was already there, undoing the crash harness. All the fur on one side of the raccoon's body was shriveled, burns showing through the worst spots, and makeshift bandages failed to keep blood from leaking through. He slid limply to the side as Groot got the harness off and Peter pushed past to scoop Rocket up in his arms. Gamora reached across and put her hand on the raccoon's neck to take his pulse.

"He's alive, but weak," she said. Peter already knew that. He could feel Rocket breathing in his arms and turned back toward the Milano. Rocket was so light. Even with his cybernetics he weighed less than a third what Peter did and the raccoon always felt so small and frail in his arms. Rocket's fierce disposition made him seem much larger when he was awake.

"Mantis, put the scanners on automatic and get the medical gear out," Peter said into his implanted comm, and just then Rocket stirred in his grip. One little clawed hand felt blindly past Peter's arm until it found the side of Groot's face. Rocket nodded, his eyes open only to slits, and his other hand reached out. "Drax..."

Drax took the tiny hand in his own and let himself be pulled close. Peter felt an awful chill down his back at the thought that Rocket might be dying but the raccoon clamped down on Drax's fingers and wouldn't let himself be carried into the Milano.

"What is it, friend," Drax rumbled.

"Drax, get a suit. Outside the cutter, should be wedged into the atmospheric thruster intake. I burned a lotta fuel getting it, don't lose it..."

Rocket shivered and fell silent, but Peter could still feel his chest rise and fall and as the raccoon's grip loosened he turned and strode out of the cutter. It was only ten steps to the common area and Mantis already had the table folded down from the wall and the medical gear unshipped. Gamora appeared at his side as if by magic as he lay Rocket gently on the table and Mantis handed her a scanner.

"Minor burns," she said as she ran it over the raccoon. They didn't look minor to Peter. 'Damage to his cybernetics. Probably from whatever burned him. Internal bleeding. Peter, he has shrapnel or bullet fragments embedded in his body in half a dozen places. Groot, get his blood supply."

The teenage tree nodded and opened the small stasis box where they kept their blood. Each of them was the only member of their species on board and though the blood cycler Mantis was getting out meant that operations rarely wasted blood, they stored some away for exactly this sort of situation. Even Groot had some sap-like fluid bagged in case of emergency.

"Do we need to get him to Doc Foster?" There was only one doctor in the galaxy Rocket trusted, and weirdly enough it was a human. One of these days Peter had to sit down with Paul and find out how another Terran ended up way out here.

"That might be a good idea," Gamora said grimly. "I can get to most of these, but I'd only try for the one in his leg in an emergency."

"Got it," Star-Lord said. He rose from Rocket's side, reluctantly taking his hand from the warm fur of his friend's shoulder. "I'll get us there."

"Not yet," Drax rumbled. Peter looked up to find a spacesuit just expanding to cover the giant's body. "He wants me to fetch something. It is important to him."

"Do it fast, Drax."

Drax nodded as Peter went up the stairs to the cockpit. Around the little table the other Guardians gathered. Groot lifted Rocket's limp body as Mantis slid the cycler sheet beneath the little raccoon. It would absorb any lost blood and send it through the device back into Rocket. The green-skinned assassin studied the scans on the hovering screens and stuck a series of nerve block disks on his fur. Just as she reached for a scalpel Rocket stirred.

"Gamora," he whispered, too weak to lift his head. She was connecting one of his bags of stored blood to the cycler. It would recover any new blood he lost but he was dangerously low on it already and needed a fresh infusion. "Check for bounties on Spl... _Splendid Nova,_ an' a Kree, cap'n Sharp...Sharktooth."

"I will," she said, and selected another white disk from the surgical kit. "Rocket, I know you don't like to be out around a doctor, but you're too weak from your injuries to take the stress of being awake for this. Either Mantis needs to keep you calm," she nodded to the woman across the table, "Or I need to put you out."

Rocket stiffened where he lay, wincing as just that small motion made blood well through the bandages. Capillary tendrils from the cycler sheet vacuumed it up. "I can take it. I don't need either."

"I am Groot," the little tree said, and gripped Rocket's hand in his own. "I am _Groot._ "

Rocket opened his eyes far enough to see them gathered around. He took a deep breath. "Yeah. You're right, Groot.” With a visible effort of will he forced himself to calm down, to resist the urge to run and hide. “Okay, Gamora. You can put me under."

"All right, Rocket." She glanced at the screens and moved one nerve block disk an inch higher up his leg. Her hand went back to the kit to take up a different colored disk. "When you're better, you need to tell me who did this to you."

"Did this?" He wheezed out a laugh, then coughed. There was a whisper from the airlock as Drax reappeared. He deactivated the spacesuit and held up something for Rocket to see.

It was a cybernetic hand, seared and blackened by explosion and fire. Fragments of vacuum-dried frozen flesh clung to the wrist where its owner was blown away.

"You should see the other guy," Rocket whispered as he took the knockout disk from Gamora and stuck it on his own forehead.


	7. Afterthoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rocket wakes up safe and whole after his operation and has something to say to his friends.

Cage. Rocket twitched in his sleep, pawing at imagined bars. Got to get out. Got to get out. Can't be in a cage. Not again. How to get out? Cage.

The dream took him back to his early days, before the Uplift fully took. Sometimes he even remembered his mother. Warm fur and safety, that was all he had to remember her by. She'd tried to protect him from the gloved hands, the cold surgical instruments, the pain, the cage.

Cage! Rocket shuddered in his sleep and a great soft pressure bore down on him. The huge hand stroked his flank, and Rocket relaxed. He had felt that comforting touch before, and he knew he wasn't in a cage. He was safe, with friends.

Rocket drifted up toward consciousness much more willingly this time than the last. There was the warm hand stroking his fur and there was music. He'd heard Quill cycle through his collection of music clones enough to know most of them by heart. In some cases he even knew the words and could sing along, though he'd never admit that to Pete. 

And he was surrounded by familiar, comforting scents, the mingled smell of the Guardians. The earthy smell of Groot, the sweat of Peter and Drax, the more delicate odors of Mantis and Gamora, all from the bits of their clothing and Groot's leaves sewn into the raised rim of his bed. Because that's where he was, curled up in his own round bed. Rocket stretched, pawing at the familiar feel of the cloth,and then his little clawed hand felt the fur of the opposite forearm. It was perfectly intact, with no sign of the blood or the cut it came from. Nor was his fur burned and shriveled any more. It was as though those injuries never occurred.

As he came fully awake a great hand descended on his flank once more and gently stroked his fur. There was a time he'd instantly bite anyone who tried that. Today he relaxed as the pressure of the palm flattened his fur and pressed him into the warm, fragrant cloth of his bed. His own hand sought out the larger one, not needing the ritualized scarification to tell him who it was. Drax was petting him.

As he had so recently he absorbed the information his senses provided. There was no rumble off engines but he knew that whisper of air from the vents and the faint vibration of the power units. He was in the Milano's common room with its fold-down beds, which he'd last seen stowed to make room for the table where they'd operated on him. The presence of clean fur on his arm told him he'd been elsewhere, though. Drax's was the only fresh scent.

"How long was I out," he said, his eyes still shut.

"A little more than a day," Drax rumbled. "When we got to Gumwalt your doctor friend said it was safest to keep you under. Since you'd already agreed..."

"Yeah." Rocket opened his eyes, looking around without moving his head. Across the room on a shelf was the cybernetic hand he got from Sharktooth's remains. "I guess I'm OK with that."

"I am glad," Drax rumbled. "I did not enjoy watching your fear as you were operated on last time. Quill and the others are shopping. Groot wanted to stay but I insisted it was my turn to watch you. Someone has been with you constantly since you came back."

"I appreciate that," Rocket noted. "I guess. Long as you don't mind watching me sleep." Drax just smiled. Rocket's little round bed spent more time next to Drax's bunk than anywhere else on the ship. That great callused hand had soothed many a nightmare by descending from The Destroyer's bed to pet him. It wasn't a coincidence that the nightmares came less often now. 

"Quill said to tell you - ah," Drax interrupted himself as he saw Rocket's ear flick around to point at the door. "They are back."

And they were. Groot was the first through the door, rushing over to hug Rocket despite his protestations that he was fine, das't it all, and Pete and Mantis and Gamora were right behind him, arms laden with food and a stupid grin stretched across Star-Lord's face.

"I knew you were too tough to up and die on us," Pete said, and Mantis reached out gingerly to scritch his ears.

"Of course I wasn't gonna die, it was just a few scrapes," Rocket grumbled as he leaned into the scratching. 

"That is a lie," Gamora said half seriously, stroking his tail as she spoke. It was, he thought, only the second time she'd petted him. "And you know it."

The smell of the food reached his nose and his belly let out an embarrassingly loud rumble. He didn't have to say anything. He didn't even have to get out of bed. Everyone just smiled and started handing him food. A cooked chunk of meat, then a bowl of grapes, and one thing after another until he was finally full. His cybernetics burned a ton of calories and recovering from injuries made him still more famished. He ate so much even Drax started to look a little worried. Eventually Rocket burped, settled back in his little round bed and started asking questions.

"Bounties?"

"I'm afraid not," Pete said. "I checked and Sharktooth operated outside the Nova Empire. He got kicked out of the Ravagers for, let's just say some bad stuff, and didn't have time to get on anyone else's bad side. As for the ship, the Kree wanted her back, not just news of her destruction. Dey told me they were pretty pissed." 

The way he said it, he had absolutely no doubt Rocket was responsible for the destruction of the ship. Rocket's eyes narrowed.

"They put me in a cage, Pete. They were gonna sell me. I got busted up breaking out because it was that or -"

"Shh. Its OK." Pete reached down to scratch his ears. He wasn't as good at it as Drax but Rocket would take what he could get. It was so nice to not think that every descending hand was just there to cuff him senseless or grab him by the scruff, drag him off to jail or to another operation. 

Operation. He felt over himself, finding no trace of his recent wounds, and flexed his right leg. It moved smoothly, properly, with no trace of weakness of damage cybernetics. Drax reached down and added to the petting, and Groot couldn't resist hugging him again. Groot was bigger than he was, now. And the little tree was less than a year old. How long till he was the size of Old Groot again? Would he be there to see it?

"Okay," Rocket said eventually as he pushed away the various hands and vines. "Okay. I gotta tell you guys something."

He paused, and met Groot's eyes, almost the color of his own. "Groot. I was so glad when I realized they didn't get you too. I think they wanted us both. If they'd had you...." He let go and wrung his little clawed hands. "Groot, before I met you there was no one I cared about. I was just trying to stay alive. When you found me in that alley you saved me. Made me a better person. If it weren't for you I'd be bad now. Or dead."

“But you weren't there,” he said. “I didn't know how long I had, who they were selling me to, what that person wanted. I still don't. Just that someone wanted me for something. I didn't have time to be careful. I couldn't wait to see if you came to get me. I just had to get out of that cage, off that ship.”

“No one's blaming you for escaping, Rocket,” Pete said. “How could we? Any one of us would have tried to escape too.”

“Let me say this, Pete, I gotta.” Star-Lord nodded and waited.

“We been together a year,” Rocket said, and examined the faces of his friends and his son. “And I've learned a lot. You idiots and Yondu taught me a lot. For the first time I, I...”

"You trust us," Drax rumbled, "because we are your family."

"Yeah," Rocket said. "And if one of you is hurting, or in a cage I'll try to help. You know that. Same as you'd do for me. And one last thing."

He paused again, uncomfortable with the very thought of what he was about to say. "I got out. I got out of the cage, off the ship. But I had to hurry, do stupid things to do it, and I got lucky. I could have died. And then I'd be gone. I have a reason to live, now." He took Groot's viney hands in his own. "Family. So if I wake up in a cage again, and it's das't dangerous to try to get out, I'll try to at least think about whether you might come get me. I'll try to wait, to stay alive.”

He took a deep breath. “And if you're in there too, and getting out would put you in danger, I'll stay in that cage. You're the only people I'd do that for.” He felt over his naked body once more, a last check for injuries, then accepted the pair of pants Mantis handed him.

No once brought up what Doc Foster said when he examined Rocket. It confirmed what Gamora already suspected. At least some of the wounds Rocket sustained in his escape were self inflicted. Maybe one of these days, when he and Pete or Drax were drunk enough, they'd raise the issue. They had a pretty good idea what was going on. Pete had seen him operate on himself before and it seemed all too likely that he'd hidden tools or weapons where no simple search could find them. And he'd chewed them out of himself and used them to escape. It showed how desperately determined he was to never be in a cage again.

Yet he'd just admitted that he'd stay in a cage to protect them. Rocket had told them, in his indirect way since he'd never think to say the words out loud, that he loved them.


End file.
